Computing and network technologies have transformed many aspects of everyday life. Computers have become household staples rather than luxuries, educational tools and/or entertainment centers, and provide individuals and corporations with tools to manage and forecast finances, control operations such as heating, cooling, lighting and security, and store records and images in a permanent and reliable medium. Networking technologies like the Internet provide individuals virtually unlimited access to remote systems, information and associated applications.
As computing and network technologies have evolved and have become more robust, secure and reliable, more consumers, wholesalers, retailers, entrepreneurs, educational institutions and the like are shifting paradigms and are employing the Internet to perform business rather traditional means. For example, today consumers can access their bank accounts on-line (e.g., via the Internet) and can perform an ever growing number of banking transactions such as balance inquiries, fund transfers, bill payments, and the like. In light of such technological advances and evolution, people in general tend to be more and more concerned about being connected and/or available for various communications such as cell phone calls, text messages, emails, instant messages, land line phone calls, voice mails, real-time communications, etc. With the rapid pace of today's society, being available and/or reachable on a constant basis is fitting for busy lifestyles albeit personal or business.
However, under circumstances when an individual is knowingly unavailable, incoming data communications can be forwarded and/or redirected. For instance, a business person who plans on being out of town can designate his/her assistant to handle incoming data communications such as a voice call or an email using separate and distinct rules or applications. Thus, an incoming voice call to the business person can be automatically directed to the assistant to allow such voice call to be handled rather than being transferred to a voice mail system considering human interaction is more pleasing than automated services. Forwarding, redirection, and/or delegation generally can be applied to voice and email data communications, but tremendous difficulty exists in utilizing such techniques in the realm of unified communications across various data communication modes. To this end, the delegation of various data communications associated with unified communications typically involve complicated server and application interaction that can be tedious and expensive to implement.